The old Delta terminal is one of those Idlewild buildings that stand as ambivalent monuments to the Jet Age. Its flying-saucer shape, like the more famous TWA building's white swoop, evokes the boundless optimism of what air travel could represent in the pure and innocent futurism of the 1950s. For years now, the haute-modern geometry of these buildings has seemed quaint, a relic of the age of tailfins, and their scale, once grand, has long been inadequate for the growing needs of commuters and tourists. Of course, after September 11, the whole worldview they represent seems naive.

So the attackers succeeded. Part of the optimism of the modern airport is, implicitly, a post-religious, post-cultural optimism. Air travel would bring us together, bring us into the modern age. Technology, not God. But the 9/11 attacks were theocentricity - and a kind of anti-Western particularism - striking back. It's as if the newsstand were forced to sell only Bibles.

My mother, of course, is sure that I am crazy for attempting this trip. She may be right; if nothing else, my once-elevated motivations of religious and spiritual pilgrimage now seem hopelessly naive. I don't want to be traveling to a country under "lockdown," as one friend has reported Israel as being. I didn't expect the country to be the same as when I last was there, 1998, a year of potential and quiet. I knew that things had decayed; that the situation had degraded. But I have no real interest in participating in a siege, let alone a mutual siege such as the one Israelis and Palestinians have imposed on each other in the last month.

It's hard to fight a reflex of solidarity - now is exactly the time to go, this impulse says. You always envied the Zionism of pioneering, risk, and uncertainty. You always regretted that the Israel you came to know had already built its malls and McDonald's. Well, here is your chance. The globalization of the last decade is now threatened by violence - you will not hear the yesh! yesh! yesh! of the Jerusalem Mall. And if you do hear it, it will be an act of defiance.

It's not that I feel no affinity with the Israelis; I do. Especially the left-wing Israelis, trapped between a lunatic general Prime Minister representing them and a complete absence of leadership representing the ‘enemy.' I share their despair, their sense of ‘neither this nor that,' their sense that we had been, once, so close.

But I am no Israeli. I did not serve in the army, did not wear a gas mask ten years ago during the Gulf War, do not shape my life around the day-to-day forms of Israeli life. To pretend that through my Judaism there is some kinship that renders my current trip anything more than what it is - it's really a kind of trivialization of what it means to belong to a national community. After all, I'm opting in.

I am scared shitless of being maimed by some pointless suicide bomber. If my fate is to be annihilated in a flash of light and nails, so be it. But I cower from the possibility of spending my life in a wheelchair because some deluded nationalist has randomly selected me as the object of his desperation. What is the point of going now?

The question has a long answer. The short version of it is that this is a religious trip. I am not going to Israel to visit relatives or take another picture of the Kotel; I am going to spend time in the silence of the desert, in the airy spirituality of the northern towns, and to sing the wordless tunes that I memorized years ago in an out-of-the-way shtiebel in Jerusalem. My itinerary reads like a Fodor's guide to my own spiritual Israel.

I had wanted to make this trip in the fall, after a tumultuous summer that featured the end of a long relationship, the quitting of my job at a company I founded, and several transformative journeys in which I tried to grasp just what, exactly, made my life worth living. After the destructive events of the beginning of the summer, I was unsure whether there was anything that did. I spent the months of June, July, and August searching.

What I found had much to do with art, spirituality, and as much personal openness as I could muster. No more repressed individuality or sexuality, and no more putting off dreams of writing and making music. No more pretending that I was the nice, young Jewish lawyer. I wasn't, I hoped, rebelling for its own sake; I hoped, and still hope, that what I was trying to do was find a lifestyle that was in harmony with what was ‘real' and most important to me. I'm not sure how well I've done, but at least I ended the summer with a set of reasons to get up in the morning.

While spirituality had been a central affirmation of the summer of 2001, Judaism had not. On the contrary - in part due to the changes I tried to make in my life, I found myself more alienated from my religious Jewish friends than I ever had been before. And while I still felt a personal connection to the ‘motion and spirit' that I call God, I did not feel a connection to the rituals that had for the past seven years given my life its rhythm. I wanted to return to the places where that connection was forged, either to reestablish the bond or to recognize that its relevance to my life had faded.

That was in September. Then came the September 11 attacks and the uncertainty that followed, coupled with a more mundane reason to postpone - my sister was unable to take a trip we had planned, and we put it off until April.

So, here I am, March 31st, Kennedy Airport, with the news that Israel is at war coming over the television. As I said, the original reasons for the trip, which at the time seemed as profound and meaningful as any, now seem like fluff. Luxuries. I should go meditate in the mountains while people are murdering each other a few miles away? And I should put my life at risk, now, when I could just as easily postpone the trip until the summer?

Somewhere along the line, the determination to follow through with my plans occluded the original reasons for the plans themselves. Now, I want to do it because I said I would do it. Not out of stubbornness, exactly; more out of a determination not to let the terrorists win. Of course, they have already won. Even in the desert, I suspect that the news will follow me, changing what should be a solitary retreat into some kind of bogus act of defiance. Is it worth going? I don't know. I'll be careful. I really don't know.

April 2, 2002
Jerusalem

I had forgotten the sense of innocence Israel and Israelis have. On the news media and in political discussions, all I get is reinforcements of Israel's guilt. You get the impression that the Israelis are callous, selfish colonizers, etc. etc. But actually there is a certain naivete, almost, about the Israelis. Advertising, for example, is still more overt and obvious than in America - it rings of the American 1950s, when refrigerator companies took large, text-filled ads in magazines, and touted their appliances with flowery prose. On the drive into Jerusalem, my sherut passed a fruit-juice truck, with the script-written slogan (in Hebrew): "Juice so fresh, you can feel the fruit!"

People had prepared me for a changed Israel: built up, more cynical. Actually, Israel looks about the same. There are new skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, and unfortunate new sprawl around Jerusalem, but not an outrageous amount of either. And the country looks remarkably similar to four years ago.

What everyone must be asking is, how does it feel? The panic, the anxiety, the uncertainty? It doesn't feel like much. Last night, my friends and I went to the mall, because the mall is safe. Metal detectors; limited entrances; security guards. The place was mobbed - we're not the only people to realize this. I didn't sense much panic or anxiety. The most unusual thing about the mall was that I was there instead of at a café or somewhere else I'd prefer. That, and the Food Court open for Passover. That's what's really unusual about Israel, and what people can't stand about it: in many ways, it really is a Jewish state.

I know, there are far more food courts in Israel that are treif than this one that is kosher for Passover. But there are many that are like this one: filled with families whose Jewish religious observance doesn't require them to sit home and eat matza and cheese for a week. People who can participate fully in life. I don't really know how much of Israel's Jewishness really is the cause of the world's antipathy to it. It is anomalous in other ways; though many other countries are engaged in occupations far more odious and large in scale than Israel's, only Israel is an outpost of American influence. Israel represents America in a way that China, Congo, and Indonesia do not. Yet is that really the whole story? Is there no correlation between Israel's real anomaly - that it is the only place in the world where Jews can eat in a food court on Passover - and the world's fixated attention?

Last night, when we were at the food court, a car bomb was detonated a few miles away near downtown Jerusalem. No one was killed, thankfully. The system worked: the car was being inspected by police when it blew up. At the mall, everyone suddenly was on their cellphone, saying they're okay - or, actually, maybe they were on their cellphones all along. My friends called their relatives; I called my mother; and again, the only news our American families got from Israel was of an attack and survival. Whereas what impressed me most was the resurgence of Jewish culture - yes, in a food court, with a Burger King, where else? - and the miracle, the miracle that you forget when you aren't here, that this place exists at all.

I don't want to repeat the mistake I made five years ago, when my first day in Jerusalem was spent looking for an apartment, taking care of errands, and immersing myself in necessary trivia. We had to go to the mall anyway because my baggage is stranded in Paris and I needed clothes. And it was a safe place to eat out, which we all wanted. But, and I may need to repeat this to myself, I did not come here for the mall. I did not come here for errands or visits with friends. My primary goal is to connect spiritually - or fail to do so - with some of the primary sources of my religious consciousness. Each day needs to bring the possibility of such contact; that is why I am here. Not to write these notes, or observe the political situation.

I'm not sure I want to keep writing these notes at all. It turns the trip into material. On the one hand, it's a good way to be open and attentive to Israel. And since I'm awake at 5:30 in the morning anyway thanks to serious disruptions in my circadian rhythms, why not. But I don't want to subjugate experience to narrative, or for my first thought on seeing something beautiful to be ‘that'll make a good bit in an essay.'

It was a relief to see that my flight from Paris was nearly full, and to share a sherut with other Americans and Europeans crazy enough to come to Jerusalem. There seemed to be an unspoken bond between us as we drove in. Nothing remarkably deep or profound, but some shared understanding that we are here and other people are worrying about us.

I have lost my ambivalence about the Haredim. Driving through Mea Shearim yesterday, I felt worried that this could be the future of Israel. They are not particularly competent in anything outside the religious sphere. I think if I were Israeli, and served in the army, I really would fume in rage at these welfare-drawing, draft-dodging fundamentalists. Do the Haredim really believe that their Torah study is protecting Israel as much as the army is? They might. There is ample traditional support for the position. But it does work out nicely for them, doesn't it. Drafting the Haredim would solve so many problems. It would probably lower the number of Haredim, as the interaction with the larger society inevitably attracts some to assimilate into it. It would help the army, spread the burden around more fairly, lessen the resentment people rightly feel towards the Haredi community. It would teach the Haredim useful skills, so they could get a job instead of remain on the dole - it might also teach them some respect for a job well done, as opposed to the current denigration of work that exists in the community. Maybe one day.

I wish Israel could just give the territories over and be done with it. It isn't so, probably. And, remember, Israel tried. They tried. Now, adding anything to the deal would be rewarding terrorism. Now there is hardly anyone who wants to make a deal anyway. But I understand better the euphoria of 1994: God, if they could only just leave us alone so we can live our lives.

April 3, 11pm

Michael Jackson's 30th Anniversary special is on the television while my friends are fighting with their parents about staying in Israel. Meanwhile, family friends have invited me for dinner tomorrow to Caffit, a café that was targeted by a suicide bomber a few weeks ago, and a friend's brother went today into the army. Summary: Americans have no idea; they cower, scared, amid their culture of Michael Jackson's Disneyworld, and are insulated by layers of laziness and decadence from anything resembling the realities of life and struggle. They suppose that these realities are made of myth: martyr complexes, play-heroism, the sort of courage displayed on the countless, banal 9/11 tributes. And conversely, that to expose oneself to risk is petrifying.

It's fine that our parents are worried about us. But they seem to make the mistake most Americans make, supposing that they understand something conveyed to them entirely through mass media imagery. Is there a possibility that a bomber will strike the café I eat at tomorrow? Yes, there is a possibility - a remote one. An extremely remote one, less likely than the chance of my being hit by a car en route. To go to a café is neither an act of recklessness nor bogus heroism; it is simply going about one's business. I do not ignore or exaggerate the risks involved, nor do I think that it is worth ‘making a statement' if the risks of harm are truly significant. The pressure we are getting from our parents assumes that all acts are theatrical: the violence is terrible, the statement is foolish, the courage is dramatic (and thus for someone else), the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians is utterly alien to our own experience.

Real courage is strapping on a uniform, taking a gun, and making oneself a moving target, not out of some sense of voluntary idealism but rather out of a real responsibility, a shared burden for the security of the community. This is where people live, and they are not people different from the people in America. Except rather than dramatically shrink from the perceived dramatic risk, as dramatized by serious-sounding news anchors, they assess dangers for what they are and face them accordingly. If they have to go into the army, they understand that; if they want to go to a café, they understand that. Meanwhile in America, right-wingers say we should just kill all the Palestinians (risking, too, the lives of our murderous soldiers) while screeching in horror if any of us dares endanger our lives by sitting in a Jerusalem apartment.

Yesterday I spent a large part of the day in the Old City apartment of my friend Esther's family. It was such a relief from my American friends' worry and concern. These are the same friends who are being scolded and cajoled by one set of their parents to get the hell out of the country, now, now, now - and yet, to me, they are far more self-protective than is necessary. I don't judge them; I'm here just for a couple of weeks, while they've been worn down by nine months of attacks, some of which have been close calls. It's their decision. But my Israeli friends, who face much more real risks, aren't huddling in corners and talking about the situation all the time. Yes, there is despair, and sadness, and a national feeling of having been duped. But there's not this sort of irrational panic that attaches to the most mundane of activities.

And yes, yes, the terrorists attack the sites of mundane activities. I'm not pretending that they don't. But you either live your life, or you fear your death. Again, I don't want to turn a cup of coffee into a heroic act - if there is a real risk, it's just a stupid endangerment of one's life for no real reason. But the feeling that it is a real risk is a perception created by the media. There are steps you can take: go somewhere with security guards, with controlled entrances. Don't tempt fate. And with those steps, you can stop making the risks the center of your life.

The trip so far has been okay. Not great and not awful. I am thankful to at last, 48 hours after arriving, have my luggage - it's a terrible feeling of unsettledness not to have any of my things. That combined with the bad weather has led to some depressing moments. Yesterday I visited three of my favorite ‘spiritual' places in Jerusalem - Space that Sees in the Israel Museum, the Kotel, and the field near my old apartments. But it was cold and rainy; I couldn't linger much at any place. Most of my time has been spent in apartments, doing things I could do as easily in America. In part, this has been a nice feature of the trip; I have experienced normal life in Jerusalem. It's as far from a tourist's trip as can be imagined. And yet I'm itching to be by myself, in nature, away from both the security threat and all of these people chattering endlessly about it.

I do feel a strange sense of belonging here. Some of it is familiar, some new. The familiar part is the feeling that, whatever this means, this is my country more than America is. It is a place where I can be myself, where I care about what happens to the place, and where I feel a personal investment in the national debates. It is, more importantly, a place where my religious practices can be integrated into the greater rush of life, rather than exist in a sort of state of perpetually uneasy near-contradiction. One feeling that I think has been amplified by the security situation is my sense that Israeli life is less dominated by trivia than American life. There is a great degree of frivolity, ever increasing, in secular Israeli culture. But there is also a gravitas, which comes not from ideology but from reality. You can enjoy the stupid pop music, but you know that there is more to life, because you have experienced it yourself, or soon will.

Does this mean that Israel's state of conflict improves the souls of individual Israelis? I think it does, although I would make the trade back if I could. Not that it is my trade to make. I suppose in a sense that really is the question facing the ‘greater Israel' right wing: to trade an abstract value (Jewish sovereignty over Biblical land) for the concrete value of life. Most of Israel has made up its mind that lives matter more. The former peaceniks who now support war do so not out of a desire to conquer land, but out of the failure to negotiate. They've already decided in favor of McDonald's, and everyone knows McDonald's countries never fight each other.

I have no patience for these selfish, fat, lazy Americans who preach war from the sidelines and act like cowards. They are putting my friends through a difficult time, because they themselves are filled with fear. Stifle your fear, trust your children to make an intelligent decision, and accept their own valuations of their lives and the risks. And shut the hell up.

April 5

Yesterday was better. After some ennui in the morning, I got the hell out of the apartment and had a very good, full day in Jerusalem. The key is to follow the unexpected. I had taken the 24 bus to Givat Ram, which gets me reasonably close to the central bus station, but when I got off at the bus stop, something just drew me into the university, just for a moment, I thought, I don't know why. I ended up in the Scholem library in the National Library, and spent two or three hours looking through the books. The collection, of course, is fantastic; between Scholem's own volumes and the additions to them, it's probably the most concentrated Kabbalah and related mysticism collection in the world. As I wrote in my notes, I'm not sure whether I was authentically researching and reading what I was looking at, or whether what I was doing was playing at being myself four years ago - really, eight years ago, when I was focused more intently on mysticism. It is another of my roads not taken. There came and went a few rumpled professor-types, and a couple of Israeli students who have that hard-to-define quality that comes from spending hours with Kabbalistic texts. I thought, I could have been one of those. I still think that. I wonder what that life would be like. I am cut out to be a college professor, clearly. The opportunity to continually do new research, the teaching, the writing - all my strengths. For some reason I harbor this notion that to be a professor would be to renounce life. As opposed to what? I don't know. It's not as if I am making such a difference in the world as is. I have my nice projects, but the world spins on regardless. I thought as I was reading through some of the books that my music, particularly my music, and art projects are so distant from what matters in the world, and from what I think is interesting. Shouldn't I be making music that makes you want to ascend to heights of ecstasy, or in the alternative drift into contemplative bliss? Why am I making primitive rock and roll?

So I got some interesting ideas for more graduate work in Kabbalah and religious studies. ‘Religion and Insanity,' looking in particular at some of the 20th century texts that I find so interesting and so loopy. Queer spirituality, but really, not in that pastel, new-age mode that I find so annoying. I'd like to see a gay Kabbalah. Eros and Agape, but from a Jewish perspective. The idea of ‘dimensions.' Poesis as a solution to the question of ‘voice of God' or ‘delusion' - taking the ‘kingdom of God within' seriously. So many interesting topics. And one of the features of the academic perspective is that you are surrounded by religious speech, but you do not have to question constantly whether you believe it. At times you may be involved with the Ultimate; at times just with a particularly intense human striving. Either way is, to me, rewarding.

Of course, I feel myself zigzagging again. I want all of this, yet the only way to go about it properly is to focus on it, getting rid of the bands, the novels, even perhaps the other Jewish writing. And what of the company? And what of using my legal skills to help fight the wanton destruction of the Earth? What about the writing programs to which I have applied? And what of the fact that I am thirty years old, and here I am giving serious contemplation to starting, again, another career? True, it's possible that the Hebrew U. work could transfer. I could well do just the PhD part. But, Jay, come on.

When I think of returning to Kabbalah and its related topics, I think of returning here. I love it here; this, as much as New York, is my home. Of course there are elements that are difficult - I don't mean the war; I mean just the constant shtuyot of Israeli society, from the multiplying malls to the politics. But this really is where I belong, I think. I feel so integrated here. Back to the food court idea (which happened again yesterday): I want to be normal. Not in the sense of like-everyone-else, but in the sense of fitting into the greater society. Is that so wrong? I fit in here in a way that even in New York I don't.

After the library and the bus station (where I bought Adam's stuff), I went to Har Herzl and to Yad Vashem. Of all the graves, memorials, and museums, the most authentically affecting moment came when I was in one of the new sections of Har Herzl's cemetary, looking at the graves of people born in 1981, and a woman drove up, seemed to leave her car door open, and went to tend a grave recently dug. The car beeped as she weeded. It was already a routine to her, maintaining the grave of her dead son.

Some of the graves filled me only with sadness - these kids, kids. Others filled me with anger: one 20-year-old killed at Tzomet Netzarim in Gaza, defending a settlement that should not be there, has no reason to be there. I believe that the overwhelming majority of the dead in Har Herzl did not die in vain. But this kid killed to defend thirty settler families in the middle of the Gaza strip - what was his death for? What policy did it serve? How did it help realize the dream of the Jewish state?

We should be out of Gaza. Keep the northern settlements, keep Gush Katif in the south, and get out. Close the settlements in the middle, close the Israeli roads, and put a fence around the whole thing. When the situation is good, open the doors. When it is bad, slam them shut. This is the only way to peace. Give them their land, get out of where we don't need to be, and have a border that makes sense. And, with respect to Gaza at least, everyone but the lunatic right has known this for years. Rabin could've closed the middle settlements when he had the chance. Now, one can make a good argument that any concession is a bad idea, because it would appear to be rewarding terrorism. Now we are trapped in our unsustainable situation.

At dinner last night, Myra Levine said, "We're still in the peace camp. But you can't let yourself be blown up all the time."

That is the quandary: what is Israel to do? Nations around the world condemn the recent operations. But what is Israel to do? Continue to sit and chide Arafat for not doing enough? It's not that he's not doing enough - he is supporting, affirmatively, the terrorists! There is no one in the Palestinian camp with any power who is doing anything to stop the murder of Israeli civilians. So what should Israel do? Wait? Concede and concede to Arafat, hoping he will be grateful enough to change? They tried that policy, and it failed. Either your negotiating partner is negotiating with you for peace, or he is extorting you with violence. If the Israeli posture is one of ‘We have to give him what he wants, because otherwise we will die in suicide attacks,' this is not a peace negotiation. It's being bullied.

Yad Vashem did not affect me as much as it had in the past. Partly because, I think, I'd been there before. I'd seen the museum, and the memorials, and the rest. Of course, pictures of Nazi medical experiments are horrifying. But the only really new feeling I felt at Yad Vashem was renewed rage at those who call the Israelis ‘Nazis.' I feel I want to list the differences. Here are things the Nazis did that the Israelis have not done:

- Create ghettos where the minority population is forced to live, without proper sanitation or infrastructure
- Destroy their holy places and places of business
- Ban any interaction or mixing between the majority and minority groups
- Institute a reign of terror where deviation from the party line is punishable by imprisonment or intimidation
- Imprison the minority population
- Murder the minority population
- Perform gruesome medical experiments or forced labor on the minority population
- Invade new countries, and round up the populations of those countries into camps, where they are murdered.

To name a few.

I feel Israel needs to engage with the people who analogize them to the Nazis, rather than continue the current policy of expressing indignation. Explain what the differences are. People will forget, if they haven't already.

April 8, 2002
The Negev

In some ways, my indecision regarding Judaism is like all my other indecision. I always want "gam v'gam." I want, in this case, the richness and authenticity of real Judaism, but also the openmindedness and excitement of liberal life. In Israel, it's easier to have both because of the ambient Judaism and the critical mass. Particularly in Jerusalem, there are just lots of people seeking.

I admire Avi's description of me as "searching," though I don't know how true it really is. I have a set of opinions - ideas that matter to me. I think I'm more curious than searching, or thirsty. There is just so much in the world.

Desire is the root of suffering - if only I didn't want to succeed. Then I could do whatever I pleased. But I crave love and recognition, so I want to achieve. And thus I'm unhappy with flitting from project to project. In the desert, desire has little place. There is no one around, no sensory pleasures other than those that have been here for thousands of years. Time moves slowly. What Matters is here. To be at peace, and to act with peace and love. Maybe people see me as cynical because I speak the way they act.

We are blinded from seeing God by our civilization's incessant chatter. Imagine how much quieter the world was until just two hundred years ago.

April 11
Jerusalem

Some more impressions of Israel. Avdat - Nabatean ruins, the location beautiful. The Russian ticket-taker downstairs, telling me of his adventures in JFK, and being a nice guy about the bag. Most Russians are somewhat racist. He lives in Mitzpe Ramon. The two right-wingers who camped up at the top. Crazy religious zealots. But they have a vision which is internally consistent, as opposed to that of lefties like me. I wonder, though, how much of the current Israeli right wing is naive, not having been alive for any time when Israel really was threatened with extinction. Since 1967, it's all been about preferences, and the Arabs haven't teamed up against Israel. If there were a real war, there would be lots of enemies at once. And who knows where the tepid Europeans would be. After sunset, inexplicably passed by by a #60 bus. But perhaps for the best: the Russian cab driver and I spoke all the way to the youth hostel about his life in Beer Sheva, his 4 kids, comparing Vladivostok to Israel, his view of the matzav (also racist and simplistic, but not evil), and so on. Much better than gazing at the scenery through a bus window.

The attack on the bus outside Haifa yesterday affects me not at all. Yes, it happened. I don't understand the cowering. Of course, the little explosion at the Jerusalem bus station this morning (something mechanical, apparently) shook me up, until I figured out that the guard had said a p'zaza will happen in 30 seconds, not just happened 30 seconds ago.

My desert thoughts, roughly, seemed to center around a few topics. At Har Sdom, I was occupied mostly with what of myself to accept and what to change. Maybe my obsession with understanding, changing, repressing, hiding, revealing, accepting and expressing my sexuality has distracted me from other things for too long. Other things that should change, being blocked by things that should not. Yet I still don't know what the line is, how much I should accept who I am - the mundane example on the hike was being someone who tries to squeeze too much into plans, trying to do too much and consequently enjoying too little - and how much I should work to change it. Still an open question. Is it better to force myself to slow down and enjoy? Or to accept that squeezing a lot in is, basically, what makes me happy?

In terms of the more serious ethical and religious demands of Judaism, how much are we to accept about our failings - that we are not generous enough, or attentive enough - and how much should we work to improve ourselves?

I think the view should be that kedusha is the highest goal, but it is not the only goal. Sometimes a little of the most important stuff can be outweighed by a lot of less important stuff, without any implication that the less important is more. The larger question is the looming one of my Jewish community, if any, in general. Here, I think I can fit in pretty well, although it is true that the American forty-something people are creepy. You always get the feeling that there's something slightly off about them. In the US, it's hard to see where the niche is. All depends on whether I am with someone or not. When the star shot in the desert 2 nights ago, I wished for love.

Yom Hashoah, it turned out, was quite moving. Watched the ceremony at my hostel in Eilat, and then watched some documentary on Bulgarian Jews while eating my filet-o-fish ("shnitzel dag") dinner at a cafe. The best moment came at the beach the next morning. I was waiting for the scooter person to come by, sitting on the beach reading my stupid book about ‘God and the new physics,' which I think I will put down. A few people were around - a family, a woman swimming. At 10am the siren sounded, and it happened. The construction worker stopped his bulldozer, the family stopped playing and stood respectfully, I put my book down and stood. Even the swimmer, who seemed confused, figured it out, and also stood in place. It was very moving, not least because of the juxtaposition of German death camps and the frivolous paradise of Eilat. We had, it felt, come a long way.

Eilat is the city of lightness. Even Tel Aviv has some productivity to it, some meaning. Eilat is silly, a little oasis of stupidity, which is fine. It doesn't pretend to be more than that. How far from Auschwitz can you get?

More highlights. Riding the scooter through the desert, Timna Park, Hai Bar. And of course the ludicrous Ohel Moed exhibit with oblivious Baptist telling people about Scripture and textiles. What is he thinking? Tough but rewarding hike up Mt. Eteq. Ruach on top. Wind.

Coming back to Jerusalem, I felt I was coming back home. I know this city (in contrast to Beer Sheva, which was stinky) and feel comfortable in it. Today it's a little hazy, and I've spent the last three hours doing things like laundry and unpacking. But the laundry just stopped and soon I'm off to the Kotel.

April 16, midnight
Israeli Independence Day

Does it matter that to celebrate their nationhood, Israelis gather in each others' homes to sing songs of community and tradition, while Palestinians shoot guns in the air? One could say the Palestinians do not yet have the luxury of singing. Yet even before 1948, I don't think Israelis shot off guns like some country hicks shooting at beer cans. Before 1948, of course, they were hoarding the ammunition.

Israel also put on a rather Soviet military display in tonight's festivities, which left me cold. I was very happy to participate in Jerusalem's chosen means of celebration - gathering in homes for parties and conviviality. Is a society truly free when its citizens are afraid to gather in public? Of course, the actual risk of terrorism was very slight. But the consequences are severe, so people stay away. No one wants to be the person killed for having recklessly chosen to dance in the streets.

Some people don't understand how so many Palestinians can kill themselves for their cause. I don't understand why it's so few. Perhaps the army and police are stopping dozens of attacks every day, but not telling us about them so we don't panic. But if the population of suicide bombers is really so small, why does Arafat think it's a good idea to fund them? Surely he must've known we would find out. This is the only thing that makes me think it may be a forgery - why would he leave signed memos around, smoking guns?

Burger Ranch is among my favorite places in the capitalist-commercial world. It is what Israel is about - aligning the laws of God with the habits of man - and yet it is not a total capitulation to America, as are the McDonald's that have sprouted everywhere. In Beersheva I saw Burger Ranch employees making jokes and even talking on their pelephones. McDonald's would never allow this. Therein lies much of the difference between them.

In some ways, Burger Ranch seems like a pale imitation of BK and McD's. They copy the menu, the play equipment, and so on. But only Burger Ranch gives burgers away free to soldiers on Yom Hazikaron. They are part of this community, and they know it. The American companies are not. I could be fooling myself, but I also think BR's burgers are better.

Burger Ranch is a model for globalization, for better and for worse. It's locally owned; revenues stay here. It provides specialization - in this case, kashrut, certain salad options, etc. - which gives cultures their flavor. And most of all, as noted above, it is human. It lets its employees be human beings, not drones. Personally I will certainly trade a little bit of quality control for that. I won't trade cleanliness and basic quality, but if it takes an extra thirty seconds for my order to go through, that is okay. If it's not okay with me at the time, it provides a moment to stop and think about what matters in life, because surely the people being people are more important than a slight delay. And the thirty seconds can help me become more human.

These are some of the reasons I really like Burger Ranch.

April 17

I want not at all to go to Paris. I want to spend more days like today writing, being in a place where I can be entirely myself without compromising. In the Paris I will be visiting, sensual pleasure rules, the spirit is marginalized, and Jews are a slightly pathetic minority, huddling around in poorly-lit corners. This is even true in New York, which is probably the most Jewish city outside of Israel. Assimilated Jews with no culture, Orthodox Jews with repulsive attitudes and habits, people struggling in between. Here, Jewishness is the baseline. It is so comfortable, and yet difficult, obviously, at the same time.

One thing people, Israelis and others alike, should remember is the miraculousness of Israel's being here at all. The media depicts Israel as Goliath. But that myth is only true if the Palestinians are out on their own as David. Really, the Arabs as a whole remain Goliath, and Israel remains David. The Arabs massacred Jewish civilians over and over and over again, during the halutzim period for example. Yet we're told only about Deir Yassin. The Arabs kill and lie and try to push us into the sea, yet the media reports only that we strike back against their terrorism with "incursions." I wonder about the millions of Sudanese being killed by Muslim Arabs, the millions of Egyptians and Saudis and Jordanians living in poverty while their ruling elites live in wealth, the Kurds and Berbers and other minorities being continually subjugated by Muslim regimes. How many more of them are there than Palestinians? It makes one wonder just what it is about the Jewish state that makes it so irresistible to cover in this way.

And so now I worry that the feeling I have, which I can't really quite define, will be eroded away by Paris. Which it probably will. Mostly I think I am concerned about my fiction, which is redolent of Israel and its many details. I suppose only the one story I did today has to be set in Israel. The mikvah can be in NY, the trumpet anywhere, the beard in Israel or Brooklyn. I don't know. I fear losing this touch, because I know I did lose touch. As I have said to Jeff & Tami, I think the thing is to set up a framework for regularly being here. Such as buying an apartment. Perhaps the thing to do is intend a trip in September expressly for that purpose. By that time I will have discussed with Avi the options. He is not reliable in this area. No one is but myself, however.

The thing will be in Paris to focus not on sensuality but on art. Perhaps. Meanwhile I am already missing the opportunity to run out for something to eat, to talk to the cabdrivers in Hebrew, to cheer for a football team (which appears to have lost).

April 18
Air France

I can't believe I am leaving a country dedicated to the rebirth of a people and culture dead 2000 years, a culture which gave the world its system of religious ethics, for a country where the primary goods are fashion and cuisine. Look, the world needs fashion and cuisine too; life is not all ethics and values and so on. But really, to structure an entire society around the dramatic hypocrisy of performative language and the values of chic and elan - it isn't for me. I care how I look, but I don't really. That is, I wish I didn't. I care more, I hope, about how I think and act, what I will contribute to the world creatively.

I want to ask people what they are living for, what they think the point is. I don't know why this interests me, but it does. I don't mean what ‘the meaning of life' is, rather only what gives meaning to each individual. Is it to ‘make a mark'? To raise a family; to follow God; to enjoy; what. I feel as though Jerusalem - not Israel, but part of it - is centered around those who want to make some connection to God the center of their lives. (I do detest the word God.) If only there would be real peace, the kind of peace that now is not even imaginable, could we imagine what Jerusalem could be? A center for the West's three religions, cultural programs going on all the time not just in the Jewish part but in all parts, among all parts, debates and joint prayer sessions and disputations and celebrations. It is a utopian dream, I know, very far from today's reality, but can we at least enjoy the dream for a while?

It is a left-wing dream. Those who want to build the third temple will not like it. One would hope that in such a utopia the Islamic leaders would condemn terrorism - real terrorism, the kind that targets civilians in random attacks - and marginalize those who perpetrate it. The Christians should be okay with it. And this is the messianic dream - that the word of God goes forth from Jerusalem. It seems realizable, though so distant.

I think much of Israel is in the details, which quickly disappear from memory. Meeting David on the midrechov or Dani in the taxicab. The way the cab driver complains about the traffic. The Shamir place today, in Mea Shearim; the clothes stores with all blue and black suits. Now the people a few rows up in the plane are doing mincha. I guess a flight to/from Israel is a safe space, even on Air France. This is what makes Israel great. People know, hu mitpallel. They may not really understand him or it or why, but they understand what is going on.

And it's not like Israel doesn't have a vacation from this - that is what Tel Aviv is for. Sometimes you need lightness.

We are such a displaced people. I feel at the airport like: they are splitting us apart. Off we go, again, into a world where secret signs and subcultures are the bearers of our Jewishness. The grasping, somewhat pathetic diaspora. I feel ne'evak (if I am using that right) to Israel. Why?